Poem Sunday, week 2. Thinking today about love, and courageous love – not just romantic, but embodied, incarnational. The kind of love that makes you break down all of the boundaries that have been set between the world as it is and the world as it should be. The kind of love that makes you walk on water.

The Truelove,

by David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely

the one who is rightfully yours,

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on the grey stones

to the shore of the baying seals,

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water,

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them,

and how we are all

preparing for that

abrupt waking

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly,

so Biblically,

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love,

so that when we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don’t

because finally

after all the struggle

and all the years,

you don’t want to any more,

you’ve simply had enough

of drowning

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness,

however fluid and however

dangerous, to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

From The House of Belonging

One Response to “Poem Sunday 2”

Hey Jess,Thank you for this one. I bawl when I read it. I love it. It gives voice to my experience of stepping out and of particular belonging. Thank you. This summer, God said to me “BE BOLD in my boldness. BE TRUE in my truth. LOVE FIERCELY in my more than sufficient love.” I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase “love fiercely” until this poem. 🙂